My Bloody Valentine delivered a Christmas surprise to fans, announcing on Facebook this evening that the band finished mastering its 21-years-in-the-making follow-up to the 1991 classic ‘Loveless’ three days ago. Whether the record still will be released online before year’s end, as Kevin Shields pledged, remains to be seen.

As part of their Kickstarter campaign to raise $75,000, the makers of the documentary “Beautiful Noise” have released footage of their interview with The Cure’s Robert Smith in which he discusses his love of the Cocteau Twins and how that band’s 1984 album Treasure helped prepare him for his wedding.

Still no further word on Kevin Shields’ recent claim he’ll release the 21-years-in-the-making follow-up to My Bloody Valentine’s 1991 classic ‘Loveless’ by the end of the year, but there are continued signs of life from the slumbering shoegaze giant, with MBV today announcing three U.K. shows set for next March.

It was shocking enough when the long-delayed reissues of My Bloody Valentine’s two studio albums finally were released earlier this year, but now frontman Kevin Shields claims he’ll release the 21-year-in-the-making follow-up to ‘Loveless’ by the end of the year — and will follow that up with an EP of even newer music.

With the My Bloody Valentine’s long-delayed reissues now out and Kevin Shields talking openly about a new album, it appears 2013 will see actual MBV activity: The band is scheduled to perform three concerts in Japan next February, which would mark the dormant group’s first performances since 2009.

Now that My Bloody Valentine’s long-delayed reissues are finally out, the Analog Loyalist who runs the Power of Independent Trucking blog says there’s a packaging foul-up with ‘Loveless’: the two discs, featuring separate masterings of the 1991 album, are reversed.